


How to Take Care

by what_alchemy



Series: After Zero [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:07:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann waits. Turns out, Newton's been waiting a long time, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Take Care

Sunday teatime. Newton was supposed to have returned by now.

 

Hermann made every attempt not to think about it. He couldn’t text or call, because to do so whilst someone was driving was irresponsible and dangerous, and Hermann would not be party to such a thing. He tried to do some proofs, but he kept wondering if Newton was speeding or listening to music too loudly, so he stopped. He tried to read a novel, but he couldn’t stop picturing their Citroen overturned in a ditch somewhere between here and Exeter, so he stopped. He tended the rather sad little overgrown garden in front of the cottage until there was no more watering and weeding to be done. He cleaned the kitchen until the pain in his hip radiated all the way down his leg. He limped to the bedroom after taking a painkiller and lay in bed quietly, thinking of nothing, wishing Newton’s scent still clung to the sheets after more than a week’s absence. 

 

He was woken by the slam of the door, and by the time he propped himself up, Newton was through the bedroom door like a whirlwind, shucking his clothes like they burned and shouting at the top of his lungs. 

 

“Fuck pants! I hate pants get these motherfuckers off me, off me, off me, Jesus Christ!” He yanked the jeans down, but they were tight and uncooperative and resulted in Newton doing a hideous dance and screeching about it. Hermann, bleary, swung his legs stiffly over the edge of the mattress and got hold of one of Newton’s pant legs. They managed to strip him of the offending garment in a way that ended with Newton sprawled across the carpet and swearing at the rug burn on his knees. He still hadn’t looked at Hermann at all, and now he didn’t run his hands through his hair so much as he pulled at it in frustration, and Hermann risked his hip to kneel down beside him.

 

“Newton, stop,” he said softly. He ventured to lay a hand lightly between Newton’s shoulder blades. He sagged under the touch and pitched sideways to bury his face in Hermann’s stomach and clench his fists in Hermann’s shirt. He could feel Newton’s breath hot through the layers he wore. Hermann stroked through his hair with both hands, slow, to feel its softness, but firm against the scalp to give Newton something solid, an anchor.

 

“Can we go to bed?” Newton said. “Can we just — go to bed, Hermann? Please?”

 

As if Hermann would deny him something so simple. Hermann patted the base of his skull.

 

“Come on then,” he said. Newton got to his feet and scrubbed at his face before sticking his hand out to help lever Hermann up. Hermann let his breath out as he got his feet under him, and there was a pause as he and Newton looked each other in the face for the first time in eight days. 

 

“Hi,” Newton said. “Sorry, I didn’t even say hi. Hi, Herms, I missed the fuck out of you.”

 

“Hmph.” Hermann reached out to dust nothing off of Newton’s undershirt and found himself with his arms full of astrobiologist, breath forced out of his lungs by the clamp of Newton’s arms around him.  “ _Newton_.”

 

“Sorry, sorry,” Newton said, and let him go. He urged Hermann onto the bed and shoved him over onto his side before sliding in beside him and plastering himself against him, nose insinuated into Hermann’s neck, arm possessive over his chest, legs tangled. He took a deep breath and made a squeaking sound more appropriate for rodents than for humans as he held it longer than seemed advisable. 

 

“Newton, what are you doing?”

 

“Sniffing you.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Hermann had nothing to say to that. He just gave Newton a squeeze and let him get on with it. He had never had a partner so enthusiastic in his enjoyment of his particular charms so much, whether it was his body or his face or his brain. It was something for which he felt an absurd amount of gratitude. Newton, with his headlong dive into all things Hermann, had healed something brittle in Hermann’s core, something that hissed at Hermann that he would never have the things other people seemed to achieve so easily, because he was too shy, too ugly, too abrasive, too caught up in his own mind. But in Newton he’d found all those things and more. Companionship. Intellectual stimulation. Someone with whom to share meals, chores, laughs. The kind of sex that sated not just his body but his starved heart. Humor and support and steadiness. Arguments, of course, but somehow even those seemed necessary and nourishing. Sometimes, they just held hands on the sofa. Sometimes, Newton was in a mood to be quiet, or read, or watch something, and his hand would inch over the cushions and slide into Hermann’s, and they would stay like that until one or the other needed his hand back. Newton made him feel not alone. 

 

“You smell the best, lumpkin.” The words were muffled by the way Newton’s mouth was mashed into Hermann’s collarbone. 

 

“I like how you smell, as well,” Hermann said. Truthfully, Hermann hadn’t come in a week, and the smell of Newton in his arms again was giving his cock ideas. He was trying to will the southerly-coursing blood away on account of Newton having some sort of difficulty, but since Newton had reawakened it, Hermann’s libido was not a thing easily browbeaten. 

 

Newton popped up to look Hermann in the face. His eyes were too bright, a shining hazel-green that looked down at Hermann as if imploring him to fix all of Newton’s problems. 

 

“Really?”

 

“Well, yes,” Hermann said. He felt a blush suffuse his face, and Newton cracked a grin.

 

“Pheromone stuff and chemicals,” Newton said. “Means we’re suited to each other. I read a whole article.”

 

“Oh a whole one? What dedication, Dr. Geiszler.”

 

“I could get drunk on you,” Newton said, and he leaned down again to take deep whiffs of Hermann’s neck. Hermann shivered as if every tiny hair on his body were suddenly electrified. His cock gave up any pretense of keeping this interaction separate from the sex it was so desperate for. 

 

“Newton…”

 

“I could get drunk on you forever and you would still like me, you would still want me around, even though I am so stupid when I’m drunk, Hermann, I’m so stupid—”

 

“Shh,” Hermann said. Whatever was hurting Newton was hurting Hermann, but he wasn’t a man of words. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to make anything better. All he had was touch, care. He stroked through the thick dark hair on Newton’s head. Newton’s teeth scraped over the hollow of Hermann’s throat, and he fitted the knot of his hardening penis against Hermann’s hip. His hand swept up underneath Hermann’s shirt to tweak at a nipple. Hermann sighed and hugged Newton tighter, eyes fluttering shut to feel Newton’s body against his own again. Newton nuzzled up Hermann’s neck and face until he set his mouth against Hermann’s and kissed him like he was the feast to Newton’s starved man. He could hear the erratic patter of Newton’s pulse when he skimmed his hands over his shoulders and neck to tangle fingers in his hair again. He eased him off gently. “Newton, calm down,” he said. “Newton.”

 

Newton slid off him onto his back and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

 

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, sorry.”

 

Hermann shifted onto his side and set his hand against Newton’s sternum, fingers slipping into his collar to touch heated skin. He settled his head against Newton’s shoulder.

 

“What happened?”

 

“The same old shit,” Newton said, voice shrill. “Pushing forty and you’d think I’d have a grip on what people are like, but nope. Nope. I’m never gonna learn that lesson, Herms, I will always — I will always be that kid wondering why he sits alone at lunch every fucking day.”

 

“You’re barely thirty-seven,” Hermann said.

 

“ _Pushing forty_ ,” Newton said. “The truth no one tells you is real life’s just like high school. Cliques and gossip and snickering behind your back and passive aggressive mindfuck games and petty tyrants and the beautiful people always get away with everything, every time. High school, Herms. Just everyone’s a little balder and fatter, is all.”

 

Hermann pulled Newton’s hands away from his eyes and pressed a kiss to the hairline that was definitely not receding. Newton sighed, and Hermann shifted to slide on top of him. He inched lower to press another kiss to the belly that was definitely not on the soft side. He pushed the t-shirt up and nuzzled into the trail of dark hair beneath Newton’s sweet little hollow twist of a navel. He sighed when he felt the twitch and resurgence of Newton’s erection. Newton’s hand came down to card through his hair. 

 

“Now you know why I have refused to go to conferences all my life,” Hermann said. 

 

“Can I just hole up in here with you and stay forever?” The jocularity was forced and sharp. Hermann pulled the elastic of Newton’s boxer briefs down just enough to nose through the top of his pubic hair, where his tattoos finally gave way to tender pale flesh, untouched by needles and ink. 

 

“We’d kill each other within a week,” Hermann murmured. Newton’s cock jerked against the confines of the fabric, but Hermann could feel it straining towards his face nonetheless. Hermann pushed a firm palm against it, and Newton’s stomach sucked in with the sharp breath he drew. 

 

“I hate everyone but you,” he said. And then, urgently: “Hermann. Hermann, come up here.”

 

Hermann winced at the heat that lanced through his hip at the movement, but he complied quickly only to be enveloped in a tight embrace complete with Newton’s legs locked behind his back. 

 

“Oof,” he said. All his weight rested on Newton, who didn’t seem to mind. He had latched onto Hermann’s collarbone and was gnawing at it in a manner not precisely conducive to arousal. “Newton — my leg.”

 

Newton released him, expression tight with guilt. Hermann landed on the mattress and closed his eyes, breath leaving him in a hiss.

 

“Jesus,” Newton said. “God, I’m a fuck up.” He laid his hands on Hermann’s hip and began to rub it firmly, the heat and the touch soothing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he kept saying into Hermann’s hair. 

 

Hermann put his arm around Newton’s middle.

 

“I did miss you terribly,” he said. 

 

“Yeah?” He could hear the smile in Newton’s voice.

 

“I was inconsolable. I might have bitten the head off of one of my post-grads, events are hazy. I managed not to cry in the corner whilst clutching an item of your clothing, though.”

 

Newton laughed once, a short burst of breath through the nose. He gave Hermann a squeeze.

 

“So,” Hermann said. He cleared his throat. “So. You shouldn’t go for so long again. I find it inconvenient.”

 

Hermann might have expected a joke, or a deflection, or a syrupy nickname that simultaneously warmed him and made him cringe, but instead there was only Newton’s breath in his hair, Newton’s hand on his hip. 

 

“We should have done video calls,” Newton said after a while. “I  thought about it but I figured you were busy, so I kept it to a couple texts a day. I’m sorry. I missed you every second, plum bum.”

 

“Stop apologizing,” Hermann grumbled. “You’ve not done a thing wrong.”

 

“I’m supposed to take care of you and I couldn’t even find the balls to call you when I wanted to.”

 

“I can take care of myself, and I don’t know if you noticed, Newton, but I didn’t call you either. I’ll have you know I suffered like a 19th century consumptive, silent and picturesque.”

 

Newton snorted.

 

“You _just_ said you might have eaten one of your grad students,” he said. 

 

“Some days were better than others.”

 

“Every day was bad for me,” Newton said, quiet. Hermann was silent for a moment, but he got up despite the pout that overtook Newton’s face when he wriggled away, and he went to the closet to unearth their big foam folding wedge. When he placed it on the bed as a triangle, Newton’s face lit up and he sprang to his feet to peel off his undergarments. Hermann rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t keep the quirk of a smile out of the corner of his mouth. 

 

“You are so _predictable_ , Newton,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. Newton bounded over to him and slapped his hands away to undress him himself.

 

“You _missed_ me. You had a bone for me _the entire time I was gone_.” Newton tore Hermann’s shirt off and smacked his face into Hermann’s neck. Hermann huffed, but he didn’t protest, and soon his trousers were off, and his briefs, and then Newton was at his feet peeling his socks off. “You did!” Newton said, poking Hermann’s swollen bollocks with a finger. Hermann kicked at him without hitting anything.

 

“Get on the bed, you arse,” Hermann said. Newt scrambled to kneel beside the wedge and looked about ready to wag his tail, but Hermann climbed onto the mattress and bore him down onto his back. He went without protest, but his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down.

 

“What—”

 

“Shh,” Hermann said. “ _I’ll_ take care of _you_.” He shoved the triangle under Newton’s knees and straddled his hips. He pulled one of their little wedges under his knee. Newt’s hands came up reverent over his ribs.

 

“That doesn’t hurt?” he asked. 

 

“No,” Hermann said, even though it did, just a little. He steadied himself with hands on Newton’s shoulders and shifted his hips until they were flush against Newton’s but he was supported wholly by the ramp and Newton’s legs. Newton was fully hard, cock rosy and straining beside Hermann’s, which was gaining interest in the proceedings again now that Newton was hot and pliant between his legs, looking up at him with worship in his face. 

 

Hermann cupped Newton’s scruffy jaw and drew the pads of his thumbs over his lips. Newton ran his hands up Hermann’s stomach until they came to rest on his pectoral muscles. Hermann fancied he could feel his heart swelling, and tenderness bore him down to kiss Newton deeply, to swallow Newton’s groan and savor the way his hands pushed through Hermann’s hair. 

 

“God, Hermann,” Newton said. 

 

“I’ve got you,” Hermann said. He wanted to envelope Newton inside himself and make him feel cherished, which he was. Hermann wanted to wrap Newton so thoroughly in their union that he forgot there was anyone who had ever disdained of him. He sat back and reached for the lubrication while Newton panted beneath him, eyes heavy lidded and green with lust, hands roaming over Hermann’s hips. Hermann wiped some of the gel over his hole, and then poured a generous amount on Newton’s penis before slicking it down the base with his hand.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Newton said with a twist of his hips. He pushed his head back further into the pillows and his eyes fluttered shut. Hermann rose up and fit the blunt head of Newton’s cock at his hole. He bore down and after a moment’s resistance, his body gave and he sank fully down. Hermann’s breath left him and Newton shouted, hands convulsive on Hermann’s waist. Hermann balanced against Newton’s thighs, back arched, head thrown back, still as his body accepted the intrusion. “Are you okay?” Newton asked, breathless. “I usually finger you more, I should have —”

 

“Shush,” Hermann said. “I wanted this. It feels good when all there is is your cock, full stop. Be quiet, now.” He opened his eyes and found Newton gazing up at him in wonder and adoration. That eternally small and hurt thing inside Hermann was soothed, and he smiled. Newton grinned back at him and thrust upward. Hermann’s eyes rolled back and the smile slipped of his face as he groaned. The stretch of his arsehole around Newton’s penis was perfectly exquisite, and the fill of him inside sated a hunger Hermann had never been able to name. 

 

“God Hermann, God you’re fucking gorgeous like this, I really — I really missed this, I love being inside you, oh my _God_ —”

 

Hermann bent low to kiss the words out of Newton’s mouth. He undulated against him and worked his cock in and out in sloppy circles and ecstatic thrusts, but he never stopped kissing him, never stopped pouring all he felt into the connection they shared. He kept his hands in Newton’s hair as Newton’s roamed over his body, skin-hungry and insatiable, equally as enamored of the inside of his knees or the knobs of his spine as they were of the modest swell of his arse. Hermann loved that about him. Hermann loved him. 

 

Newton’s hips began to jerk gracelessly and he keened into Hermann’s mouth. He held Hermann down by the hips and shoved himself into him as far as he could go. He shouted as he came shaking and pulsing into Hermann’s body. Hermann groaned and grabbed for his own prick, hot and leaking between them. He rose up and bounced hard on Newton’s cock, mouth open and head thrown back, moaning as he imagined being full up of Newton’s semen. 

 

Newton was boneless beneath him, and Hermann could feel his come leaking out of his arse. The very thought of Newton’s elementals inside him, being absorbed and becoming a part of him, tightened the coil of the impending orgasm around the base of his spine. His eyes rolled back as he worked himself up and down, rhythm stuttering but hitting his prostate just so. Newton’s hands swept up his body and down again until he pushed Hermann’s hands away from his own cock to jerk it at a punishing pace himself.

 

“Oh hell, Newton,” Hermann said, “oh, God, Newton yes, yes, right there oh God I’m coming, I’m coming, I fucking — love — you — _ah!_ ” Hermann’s vision whited out as the orgasm burst out of him with staggering force. He shook above Newton, unseeing, as Newton’s cock softened inside him. Distantly, he was aware of being drawn down onto the mattress, aware of how Newton slipped out of his body, aware of the big wedge being pushed off the side of the bed, aware of the spill of semen from his anus, aware of Newton’s fingertips trailing senseless patterns on the damp skin of his back. 

 

When he finally came back to himself in full, Newton was wiping at his arsehole with a damp cloth and smearing ointment around the rim. When he was done he came back to Hermann’s side and nestled into the pillows. Hermann shifted enough to mold himself against him and throw an arm over his chest with a contented sigh. But instead of melting into him and starting his usual chatter, as is his habit, Newton remained stiff and silent. 

 

Hermann tried to shake off the daze of coming down. He leaned back to look at Newton’s profile, which was uncharacteristically stony. 

 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. Newton screwed up his nose, took his glasses off and scrubbed at his eyes. When he was done he still didn’t even turn his head in Hermann’s direction.

 

“Look, do you know what you said just then? When you came?”

 

Hermann blinked. He’d told Newton he’d loved him when he came. Newton told Hermann he loved him all the time — while he was coming, while he was making salads, while he was ranting at traffic, while he was dissecting things, while he was _defecating,_ for God’s sake. Hermann expressed his affection in other ways, but at the very least he didn’t think he’d face outright rejection if he made a declaration.

 

“I didn’t know it would so disturb you,” Hermann said. He could feel hot humiliation  rise in his gullet, and before he could restrain the words, he said, “I’ll be sure not to bother you with my pesky feelings henceforth.” He kicked at the sheets and tried to roll away so he could lock himself in the loo but Newton wrenched him back none too gently, and then Hermann was breathing hard as Newton loomed over him, eyes shocky and burning.

 

“So it wasn’t just some weird verbal tic that plopped out, you know what you said and you’re telling me right now that you meant it.”

 

Hermann scowled at him and shoved him away. He sat up and pushed down the sharp reverberation of pain down his leg. 

 

“Why the hell wouldn’t I mean it?”

 

“Because if you only say it when you’re coming then it’s not fucking real, do you get that? It’s — it’s fucking oxytocin and —”

 

“You say it all the time!” 

 

“Yeah, and that’s me, but we’re talking about you, the android who’s 87% stiff upper lip and has never said it once!” Newton’s voice had gone shrill and scraped across Hermann’s ear drums.  

 

“So I just said it! What do you want from me, Newton?”

 

“Jesus!” Newton threw his hands up. “I want it to mean something, Hermann, is that too much to ask? I want it to mean something beyond the fact that you rode my dick into the stratosphere and lost your goddamn senses and said something you’d never say otherwise!”

 

“How dare you!”

 

“How dare I! How fucking dare _you_ , Hermann Gottlieb! How fucking dare you toy with me, when you know I’ve had a terrible week, and and and just — and just, what is our life even, you fucking prick? Why did you make me move here with you and share this house with you and think I had a goddamn chance in hell—”

 

“Why are you being like this? You hate our life all of a sudden? What are you talking about, for God’s sake, Newton, _calm down_.” Hermann locked his hands around Newton’s wrists. He could feel Newton shaking. Newton tore out of his grip and turned his back to Hermann, chest heaving. 

 

“I’m gonna go,” he said, quiet now, voice raw. “I’ll crash at Arthur’s or something.”

 

Hermann wanted to plaster himself to that colorful back, wanted to hit it and scratch it and bury his face in it and beg him not to go. He didn’t even reach his hands out.

 

“I don’t understand what just happened,” he said. Newton shook his head and scraped a hand through his hair. It stuck straight up.

 

“Look, Hermann. I can’t… make you feel something you don’t. And I’ve known that, I guess, for a long time, but I’ve ignored it because I love you so much I thought it could be enough, or that you would come around, or whatever. It’s stupid. That’s a stupid thing to think, and now I can’t keep overlooking it. It _hurts me_ , do you get that? It hurts me that shit between us is so uneven. And I can’t anymore.”

 

Hermann’s chest felt like it was cracking down the middle. He watched Newton get up on shaky feet and head to the closet for some clothes. He began to shake. When Newton got to the door, he paused, shoulders tense, and Hermann blurted, “Why does it mean something when you make a joke of it but it doesn’t mean something when I say it because I feel close to you and you’re making me feel good?”

 

Newton dropped his hand from the knob but didn’t turn around.  “What are you talking about?”  

 

Hermann’s mouth twisted. 

 

“‘Oh, Hermie, flufferbutt, fairytoes, I love you, give me your doughnut,’” he said, voice cracking. “‘Oh, Herms, bubblenub, lovelump, I love you, I’ll clean the bathroom later. Oh, Hermeister, butterwing, dreamsicle, I love you, but if you don’t change that shirt I can’t be seen in public with you.'” There was more, there was so much more, but Hermann’s throat seized up and he snapped his mouth shut.

 

Newton’s hand clenched at his side. There was a moment of tension where all Hermann could hear was his own breath and the rush of blood in his ears, but Newton turned around. He was pale and hollow-eyed, and his breath was still labored.

 

“I don’t say that stuff all the time.”

 

“Yes you do.”

 

“No I—”

 

“Newton. Yes you do. If I don’t say it enough, you say it far too much. You say it until it’s meaningless. But I still believe you. Why can’t you believe me?”

 

Newton made a tiny, pained sound and sank into the armchair in the corner to bury his face in his hands.

 

He mumbled into his hands, but Hermann understood him anyway. “Fuck.”

 

Hermann felt small and stupid and awful in the soiled mess of their sheets. He hitched his shoulders up, gathered all his courage and said, “Can you come over here, please?”

 

Newton swiped a hand over his red nose and nodded. He stood at the edge of the mattress, and he and Hermann looked each other until his mouth wobbled.

 

“I’m a fuck up,” he said in a rush. “I’m sorry I’m such a fuck up, Hermann, I don’t — I didn’t mean to manipulate you with, with how I felt, or how you felt, or what it means to feel like that, I — I didn’t know. I’m so fucking _stupid_ , oh my God.” 

 

“You have to stop saying that,” Hermann murmured. If anyone had told him ten years ago that the biggest genius blowhard he’d ever met was so convinced of his own intellectual inferiority all the time, he might have expired from oxygen deprivation in a fit of laughter. He took Newton by the hand and pulled him back into bed, where he plopped his face down into Hermann’s bare stomach and shuddered. Hermann ran his fingers through his hair slow and steady. “I’m sorry as well,” Hermann said. “I should have—” He cleared his throat. “—I should have told you a long time ago. Both the — the thing, and that the way you used it so flippantly was…not good.”

 

 He could feel the curve of Newton’s mouth against his navel.

 

“‘The thing,’ Hermann? For real?”

 

“Oh for God’s sake.”

 

“Come on, dude.”

 

Hermann huffed. He hauled Newton up by the scruff like a misbehaving kitten and looked him straight in the eye.

 

“I love you,” he said. “You are the chosen partner of my life, and I missed you so much while you were gone I thought I was dying. I love you, Newton.”

 

Newton’s face went soppy.

 

“I love you too,” he said, gruff. “So we have to make a pact now.”

 

Hermann frowned. “What pact?” he said, eyes narrowing.

 

Newt stood up and kicked his jeans off again before sliding half naked into bed, his flaccid cock damp against Hermann’s side. Hermann grunted.

 

“That we’ll only use it when it’s really genuine. But we won’t be stingy with it either.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“So?” 

 

“What?”

 

Newton rolled his eyes, spat in his palm, and stuck his hand out. Hermann recoiled, but he did the same and slid their soiled palms together and they shook. Newton grinned. Hermann snatched his hand back and wiped it on the sheet.

 

“Okay, good,” Newton said. “Hermann, I love you.”

 

Hermann glared at him. “Don’t make light of it already, Newton.”

 

“I’m not! I just — I feel it a lot, okay? Like. Sometimes I look at you and I love you so much my heart hurts and I have to say ‘hi, Hermann, I love you,’ or else my whole body will explode, you know?”

 

Hermann looked at him, at this infuriating little man he’d been thrown together with when the world was teetering at the precipice of destruction, someone he’d never have thought to choose but fate in its infinite wisdom had chosen for him, and soft feeling overcame him at the sight of the silver at Newton’s temples, gleaming and sticking up every which way, at his crooked glasses, at the colors that snaked up his arms, at the light of hope in churning sea eyes. 

 

“Yes,” Hermann said at last. “Yes, I do know.”


End file.
